On the Trail of the Tale

Every year, myriad writers flock to the Nantucket Film festival. Since the focus of the festival has always been screenwriting, writers whose screenplays have become productions in the festival know they will get the recognition they so rarely get elsewhere. But the festival always attracts so many other writers - writers like Poet/Journalist Brooks Robards and Stage Director-turned-Screenwriter Eddy Gilbert Herch - who attend the festival though they have no relationship whatsoever to any film or screenplay being shown on the island. What attracts writers whose work thus far has been for other media, writers with no real vested interest in anything anyone will leave Nantucket talking about?

“That’s easy,” croons Martha’s Vineyard resident Robards. “The Nantucket Film Festival is magical. There are so many opportunities to see good movies that aren’t TERMINATOR III.”

Not that Robards has anything against the TERMINATOR films. She wrote ARNOLD SCHWARZENNEGGER, the coffee table book, which has sold very well, at least in part because of the films' popularity. But she recognizes that the art of writing is not what that genre is about, and what writers hunger for is film that is steeped in good writing.

“Every writer hopes to write a great film, a great story,” Brooks believes. “Of course, not everyone can - screenwriting is a difficult discipline. But anyone who will make the transition wants to write a script that is well written, with well-developed characters. Storytelling really is the heart of filmmaking.”

And it’s storytelling that is the focus of the Nantucket Film Festival, the soul of the gathering.

Eddy Gilbert Herch, who is well known in filmmaking circles from his days as Director of Fifth Night at the Nuyorican Theater in New York, agrees. He was the midwife to over 30 independent film projects including GIRLFIGHT and RODGER DODGER, which brought legendary success to filmmakers like Karyn Kusama and Dylan Kidd.

“What attracts me to the Nantucket Film Festival - besides the networking - is the storytelling,” Eddy readily asserts. “It’s a sharing of emotional experience . . . the connectivity that binds us to one commonality. . . our reason to live, love.”

After years of working on behalf of other screenwriters, Herch has turned his attentions to writing and producing his own projects. “Networking is fundamental to realizing any dream that does not exist in a vacuum. My reputation allows me more than my share of freedom to approach anyone I think I could establish a symbiosis with, and Nantucket is the most relaxed, natural Petrie dish for that to take place in.”

Eddy saw NFF as the perfect opportunity to meet the people he will need to get his projects up and running. “I’ve attended Sundance, Tribeca, Lake Placid and other festivals,” says Eddy. “ My tattoo reads, ‘Born to schmooze.’ I feel part of something, a fluid, vibrant, living thing.”

Not an abstract dream, Herch’s screenplay CUT FLOWERS is in the fundraising phase of its development, and the Nantucket Film Festival afforded opportunities for him to recruit actors, producers, a director. By next year, he hopes to have found his way at least to preproduction.

Brooks’ agenda was a bit different. As a journalist who writes mainly about film for a variety of publications, her original objective was to “spy” on the festival for her summer island. “There’s such proximity - and rivalry - between the Vineyard and Nantucket. I mean, I’ve been summering on Martha’s Vineyard for over 35 years, and I had never spent a night on Nantucket. I would have gone earlier, but I had never had an assignment, and this time I was actually asked to write about the experience for the MARTHA’S VINEYARD MAGAZINE.”

A veteran writer - two books of her poetry are newly published and available in bookstores around New England - Robards also attended the Nantucket Film festival to seriously explore a screenwriting career. Being at the Festival afforded her the opportunity to listen to the experts, to learn with the other neophytes, to garner the tools she will need to move forward in that vein.

“Magazine writing -- hey, I started out with LIFE MAGAZINE - and academia (she taught Film Studies at Westfield State) were fallbacks for me,” Robards admits. “I always loved the visual arts - my mother was a visual artist. This is the first time I really have the freedom to go ahead and make my dream of writing for films come true.”

Robards is most impressed with films like WHALE RIDER, which she saw three times at NFF. “I’ve waited this long to be a screenwriter, you know? I want to be the kind of story teller that films for Nantucket.”

Herch too is finished waiting for his writing days to blossom. “After a seven-year bout with crippling cancer, which demanded learning how to walk again, I have resurfaced. Nantucket is akin to summer camp for adults, ‘Survivor’ for cinephiles. I am impressed by the sense of community that always comes out of Nantucket, more than any other festival.”

It’s the festival of writers in every possible way, an affirmation that behind any good film is a great writer.

Carla Stockton is celebrating her fifth year as the other half of Bagel Fish. She and partner Daniel Fine are in development on their firstfeature BAGEL KING and have a second, TOO MUCH OF NOTHING, ready to roll as well. When not fundraising, Ms. Stockton writes for IMAGINE, works on her short stories and screenplays, and teaches Acting, Acting for the Camera, and Screenwriting at Bagel Fish headquarters in New Haven. In February, Bagel Fish will produce a celebrity reading in tribute to Sidney Lumet, which Daniel Fine will direct, at the Director's View Film Festival in Stamford, Ct.